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We've got another great duo to introduce you to this week - Doodles and Kreations! This team is made up of Kim and Debby, we spoke with Kim about their store and teaching journey. These ladies are preschool bilingual teachers, so they definitely bring something different to the table.

Kim, like many teachers, knew from a young age that it was what she was meant to do. She used to play school with her neighbors in the front yard, teaching them as they played. Her friends would go home upset because she tried to give them homework before they left! Kim is sure that she was born to be a teacher and she would not be comfortable doing anything else. A principal once told her "A preachers is born to preach and a teacher is born to teach" and those words still stick with her today.

In the classroom, Kim always enjoyed creating her own materials. When she began teaching she found there was a void in the market for cute materials for Spanish speaking students. She got in the habit of making all her own games and activities. Her partner, Debby, collaborated and wanted to share with other teachers. That is when they found TpT. They have a stack of resources they are remaking with graphics by Debby and are eagerly waiting to share them with other teachers.

We'll be looking at their Halloween Letter Match in a few minutes, but lets get to our fun questions for the week :)

Q: How old you would be if you didn't know how old you are?
A: I would be 5 years old. I love to sit and color and make crafts and
activities. Being a PK teachers give me the opportunity to do what I
love to do. What other job lets you sing and dance and cut and color?

Q: If you could make a 30 second speech to the entire world, what would you say?A: There
are too many people in this world doing things that they hate. Everyone
has a passion. Find what your passion is and try to find a job that
allows you to do work while enjoying your job. We love our jobs and we
are very passionate about doing them. Life is too short to hate your
job.

Q: If you could be any superhero, who would you be? Why?A: I would be
Wonder Woman. I have 8 year old twins that keep me running all the time.
It is all I can do to keep up with them. If I were Wonder Woman I would
get the housework and laundry done in a flash so that I could enjoy
doing activities with my munchkins.

This is a cute Halloween themed letter matching game. Essentially it helps your students learn the alphabet and the sounds the letters make. You can use this in two ways. You can either create a file folder game, as pictured, or use two cookie sheets for the game.

The game also comes in three versions!
1. Pictures-to help young learners practice visual discrimination skills
2. Lower case letters-to match to pictures
3. Upper case letters-to match to pictures

If you're looking for an easy center for Halloween this would be a great addition to your collection. Drop by the store or blog for more information!

Ever since we posted a free list of collaborative boards in our TpT store, we've gotten a ton of questions about how these things work. For Q&A Monday, we'll be answering the following question.

Q: How do you create a collaborative board on Pinterest?

A: Check out these few simple steps ~ We are going through the process of creating a new board to show you, but you can do this with existing boards as well, just skip to Step 6

1. Go to pinterest.com (at this point you can look at your boards or dive right in)

2. Click the "Add +" Button

3. Choose "Create a Board"

4. Edit your board details. Be sure to choose an appropriate title and the correct category your board should be placed under.

5. At this point, you can add more collaborators to your board. Note the area that says "Who can pin?"... this is where you can invite others to pin on your board. It is crucial that you are following at least one board of the person you are trying to invite. Otherwise it won't work! We are using our friend Richi as an example. We simple began to type in her name and her picture popped up. Once we click on her name, she is automatically sent an invitation to pin with us on our new board.

6. Once you are finished editing your board details, simply click "Create Board" and you will be taken to the following page. To change any details, click in "Edit Board".

7. You will be able to change the name of the board, description of the board, board category, and those who are allowed to pin to the board. Our board shows that we can pin, as well as Richi. However since she has not accepted our invitation yet it shows her name in grey rather than black.

If you have any questions about this, or a question you would like to see in a future Q&A post, please leave a comment below. If you would also like to be added to our "Winter Wonderland" board, please leave your Pinterest URL in the comments.

We'd like to introduce you to a dynamic duo this Friday. Little Red's Schoolhouse is a fantastic store created by two Canadian sisters. Following the footsteps of their parents, Kristin and her sister, Katie, are teaching, but have some things they are very passionate about.

The sisters are currently teaching ESL in South Korea. What an adventure! Kristin is teaching at an English library. And when he is not teaching, she is writing. Typically Kristin writes things for children such as textbook series or storybooks. Her sister is also a part-time teacher, but her calling is illustrations. These two make up a fantastic team.

It was only natural that they start a store together. Little Red's Schoolhouse is still in its infancy (only a little over two weeks old), but you would never know it by looking at their products. Since these lovely ladies have experience with publishing, they know how to pay attention to detail and create professional looking materials.

We spoke with Kristin, who loves the "Eureka!" moment students have when everything comes into clear view. Being a writer, she also enjoys helping students discover their writing voice. She loves that when they find this voice, their creativity and enthusiasm soar.

Having experienced education in Korea, Kristin hopes for a day where less pressure is put on students to succeed in school. To clarify, she does want them to succeed, but not to the point where they don't get a chance to eat or sleep. Due to the competition in the South Korean schools, students are forced to go to multiple after-school academies. She tells us that even elementary students work with tutors or in classrooms until 9pm. This is certainly something that needs some consideration.

Kristin loves teaching history. She recently read a Magic Tree House book about the Civil War with her weekend book club class. The students had a great time learning about the events and people of the past. Kristin strives to show the students as many authentic documents or objects as possible when teaching. It's funny how sometimes students don't even realize that some of what they are learning about actually happened at one time.

We will be delving into a Halloween item from Little Red's Schoolhouse, but Kristin's favorite item is a lesson packet for "The Star Lady" by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey. She decided to create a packet for this short story because it was very sweet, but also very informative. The book teaches about Betsy Ross, the American Revolution, George Washington, life during Colonial times, and even more. This is definitely an item worth checking out. You can see a description on their blog, just click the picture below.

And just for fun... we asked Kristin to describe her life in a six word sentence: "Always looking forward, never looking backward."

This activity pack is jammed full of activities. You will find:
-A teacher's guide
-Original story with discussion questions
-Vocabulary worksheets for story
-Reading Comprehension worksheet for story
-Making sentences worksheet for story
-Word Scramble for story
-Fill in the Blanks worksheet for story
-Quotation Marks practice for story
-Crossword Puzzle for story
-Consonant Blends worksheet
-Syllables worksheet
-Alphabetical order worksheet
-Identifying Vocabulary Cut and Paste
-Word Search
-Creative writing exercise
-Jack-o’-lantern craft activity
-Classroom Halloween party ideas for the teacher
-Halloween flashcards
-Halloween coloring pages
-Answer key

Like we said, jammed full of activities! Obviously we can't write about everything (this post is already a bit lengthy), so we will settle for the first third.

We think pictures will do more justice for these ladies' work than our descriptions, so here are a few shots of what is included for you.

As you can see, these sheets look very professional and they are definitely a great learning tool. If you would like to hear about any other parts of the packet in more detail, let us know in the comments and we will answer you this weekend!

We've been boo-ed a few times from some of our great bloggy friends, and we aren't ignoring you! We're just trying to keep those rules straight and find some new friends to boo :)

Hi everyone! We've been kind of busy around the castle, as we mentioned a few days ago. Blogging is still something quite new to us - we've only been at this for a month and half but we already have an awesome amount of readers! We love our followers :)

So, we're going to shake things up a bit. The blogging schedule is going to change.

We try our best to keep up with everyone's awesome questions, but sometimes emails get lost in the shuffle. We miss a post on a forum. Or simply forget! Several of our lovely "royal subjects" have asked for a Q & A section, and so it will be done!

Isn't that the same thing as before? Why yes it is. We love sharing websites and videos with you. One of our readers (thanks, Rikki!) informed us that even though YouTube is blocked at school, she can still access our blog, which means she can play our videos! Expect a lot more of those in the future.

We're having so much fun with our Friday Features. We've got some amazing authors and products lined up through FEBRUARY!!! So be sure to keep checking back to find some new talent. Tomorrow's feature is going to be a good one.

This leaves plenty of room for us to jump in other times during the week for more spontaneous posts, linky parties, and giveaway shout outs.

We've also been revamping our Thanksgiving Literacy Activities. The version in our store was one of our first products and contains activities for Thanksgiving Is..., 'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving at the Tappletons. We are remaking all those activities and adding another book to the unit - Turkey Trouble. If you would like to see any other books added to the unit, let us know in the comments.

We've finally got our October Currently ready, so we're going to keep this post short. Things have been busy around Creation Castle, we've been uploading a few new products to our store and began some new projects. Since things are so hectic around here, we are changing our blogging schedule a little bit, but we'll tell you more about that tomorrow.

Check out two of our newest centers! We've also recently added a Kindergarten centers pack.

And now on to our Currently from the lovely Farley...

Can't believe tomorrow is Friday already! We hope you were able to enjoy a short week at school!

We found this fabulous idea through Pinterest. The original article on this organization technique can be found here.

As you can see from the picture above, this is simply a re-purposed spice rack. The great thing about this project is you don't have to make anything! Sure, you could print cute labels to put on the bottle tops, but that is not necessary.

Simply, grab an old spice rack from home or buy one at the local grocery store. Then throw all those little items that don't have a home in the bottles. This would be great for thumb tacks, rubber bands, or even small art supplies.

We've got another awesome teacher-author to share with you this week. Kristin is the lovely lady behind Taking a Walk on the Teaching Side. She is all about family and friends down in Georgia. Kristin loves sketching, nature, cupcakes, travel, and exercise. Due to the job market, she is currently a substitute and tutor, but she is very antsy to get back into her own classroom. Much of her family are teachers (even her husband) and she was previously a Title I teacher in Atlanta.

Kristin knew from a young age that she probably wanted to be a teacher. She grew up around educators - her grandma, grandpa, and mom. Through the years she witnessed how important education was and placed a lot of value on her own education. However, she did not officially decide to become a teacher until she began college.

Kristin enjoys many things about teaching. She likes working with the students and seeing their transformations from the beginning to the end of the year. She also loves the fact that teaching is never boring or monotonous - things change from to day to day and you never know what to expect. Even though it can be stressful, like many, Kristin believes the rewards outweigh the negatives. Kristin found it hard to choose just one thing she enjoys most about teaching, but she really likes the creative aspect.

Being creative is what has led her to Teachers Pay Teachers. Kristin has a great store with 98 products! Her favorite item she has created is Dee Dee the Dodo Book. This is an original book she wrote and illustrated in a college class. She now sells this as a supplement for extinction lessons. Not only does she love the story, but so do students. The story helps them learn about extinction and the effects humans can have on the environment.

Excerpt from Dee Dee the Dodo Book

Kristin shared her Common Core Writing Prompts with us this week. She created these prompts because she wanted to give teachers a way to provide their students with fun and engaging writing ideas that were aligned with the Common Core. The fun shape comes for Kristin's experience in making cupcake toppers. These cute informational, narrative, opinion, and creative prompts can easily be glued to Popsicle sticks.

We previewed a set of 40 prompts. Kristin has three small sets like this in her store and also a bundled set with all the writing prompts. Our set came with 10 prompts for each category (informational, narrative, opinion, and creative).

Each prompt looks something like this. The prompt types are color coded and also state what type of prompt it is at the top (beneath the ladybug). Some prompts are silly, like creating your own ice cream flavor. Other prompts, like the one pictured above have real life implications.

One of our favorites was this one... it will really get your students thinking. Plus, anyone can write about this who attends school. Everyone will have differing opinions and the background knowledge to go along side of them.

And... just for fun, we asked Kristin if she could be any fairy tale character, who would she be and why?

Alice in Wonderland. I had an Alice dress when I was a kid and would watch the Alice Through the Looking Glass 1980s movie version just about every day. Wonderland is just so whimsical!

Be sure to stop by Kristin's store and blog for some great resources! She is even having a sale today!

Don't forget to stop by the giveaway, you've only got two days left to enter!

We've got a question for all our lovely readers today. Many of our teacher friends participated in Tara's "Monday Made It" over at 4th Grade Frolics during the summer and we are curious... how many of you have created crate seats?

There are quite a few versions floating around Pinterest. Here are a few that we have found.

About Us

At Creation Castle, we are passionate about creating meaningful curriculum to help elementary teachers. We strive to create engaging resources to be used in classrooms or in home school environments. All of our resources are created by a Texas certified teacher with a commitment to effective and reliable content. In the Creation Castle store you will find a variety of resources for language arts, science, social studies, and math across several grade levels.